QUICK SHOW SUMMARY: Author of "American Exodus" Giles Slade sees humans joining plants & animals in migration toward Poles. Paul Beckwith on alarming new Arctic melt science from NASA. Dr. Nathan Phillips on gas leaks in Boston and Washington D.C. Grab it now.

READY TO SCRAMBLE TO THE POLES?

It's hard to imagine. Will you decide to move, to leave your home, because of climate change? Maybe relentless heat becomes too much. Fires could burn you out, of floods come so often there's no money to rebuild. It might be just one too many awful storms. Crops could fail, goosing food price ridiculously high, busting the local economy.

Animals, plants and fish are already moving either toward the Poles, or to higher ground. Humans, for all our technology, may not be exempt. Some of you are already wondering if that's in your future too.

Our first guest says it will happen. That's Giles Slade, author of American Exodus. He's talking about millions of Americans, and Latin Americans, seeking greener pastures, or at least cooler ones, in Canada and Alaska. The Canadians may simply move even further north.

The same future has been predicted by British scientists Sir James Lovelock. He sees the ocean-wrapped British Isles become a destination point for North Africans, and people from Southern Europe, as great deserts form there. Look out Scandinavia and Siberia, for the same reasons.

This may not happen this year, or even this decade, but we'll talk about it.

Then climate scientist Paul Beckwith returns with a startling new NASA study about the Arctic Ice melt. That change is producing about one quarter of all warming. How will that change science and climate activism?

Worried about methane leaks in the Arctic? We wrap up with another new survey of natural gas leaks in major American cities, this time in Boston and Washington D.C. Measurement show our big cities are big methane sources. That's something the "natural" gas salespeople don't tell you, when they promise to be better than coal.

Ready? I'm Alex Smith, and this is Radio Ecoshock.

Download or listen to this Radio Ecoshock show in CD Quality (56 MB) or Lo-Fi (14 MB)

AMERICAN EXODUS - GILES SLADE

Maybe after a cold winter, some gritty, sweaty summers sound pretty good. As long as the power stays on, with air-conditioners running.

But then food gets too expensive or runs out. Or you can't get insurance after yet another flood, storm or fire. With no money to rebuild, It's time. It's time to move the family somewhere cooler, with regular rain. It's time to move to New Zealand, to Scandinanvia, or to Canada, if you can.

What if a few million others go the same route? Our next guest Giles Slade thinks it will happen: a massive migration, driven by climate change and a fallen economy. Millions of Americans, and maybe Latin Americans, will move north.



Giles Slade is an award winning author with his works about consumption and planned obsolecence. From his home on the West Coast of Canada, he joins us now, to talk about his book ""

Giles is pretty well known for two previous books: "The Big Disconnect – How our long affair with ever-new technologies has undermined interpersonal relationships" and "Made to Break, Technology and Obsolescence in America." That last one captured the International Publisher's Gold Medal (IPPY award) for best Environment/Ecology/Nature book of 2007.

We talk about previous migrations, starting with the "OKies" who fled Oklahoma and surrounding states during the Dust Bowl in the 1930's. Giles' message: don't expect to be welcomed as a climate refugee. The OKies were treated as second class citizens, harassed by local police, and got the worst jobs, if any.

It was a little better for what may be America's first climate refugees, the thousands who fled New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. But there was still a tendency to blame the victims. Plus, there was a reasonably functioning society around them.

You know it's been a rough road for the millions of Mexicans and Latin Americans arriving in the U.S., legally and illegally.

We discuss a Canadian preoccupation: if the weather gets too bad or too hot, will millions of Americans cross the border into Canada? Strangely, the American military has looked at possibilities, but the Canadian government has it's head buried firmly in their .... climate denial.

James Lovelock, picturing Britain as an island somewhat cooled by surrounding seas, proposed the government get a start now, building schools and hospitals to serve the millions of climate refugees coming. Indeed, there are more people from the dry, hot Middle East and Mediterranean moving to the United Kingdom. Should Canada prepare as well? Is any preparation possible?

A lot of Americans are very patriotic. They love the place where they live. It would be heart-breaking to leave. It's going to take a lot to make them move to another country. People will only leave their homes when they have no other choice.

I think the rich will move first, perhaps establishing a base to run to, with lots of preparation. Poorer people will just set out on the roads driving or even walking north. That could end up with like Cormac McCarthy's book "The Road".

Download/listen to this 25 minute Radio Ecoshock interview with Giles Slade in CD Quality or Lo-Fi

Keep track of Giles Slade at his web site.

ARCTIC ICE MELT WARMS WORLD BY ANOTHER 25% - PAUL BECKWITH

When there's big news about the Arctic Sea ice, and there is - who else to call but Paul Beckwith. He's the double-Masters man, working on his Doctorate in climatology at the University of Ottawa. Paul has been watching the Arctic ice closely for years.



A newly released study by NASA, the National Atmospheric and Space Administration, has calculated the difference in reflection of the Sun's rays, due to less sea ice in the Arctic during summer. It doesn't sound like a big change, being about 4% more heat absorbed now, compared to 1979. But NASA says that is huge, accounting for 25% as much global warming as all our human-made fossil fuel burning put together.

The Journal reference for this new study is: PNAS, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1318201111

Until this study, we had no idea. That means there is now a force for warming well beyond human control. It's not our tailpipes or our factories, but simple loss of sea ice (which melted due to our tailpipes and our factories over the past few decades). This is just the loss of bright reflective surface, and does not include the extra heat pumped into the darker ocean below. It's big, big news, and Paul Beckwith is just the man to bring it into perspective.

Listen to this 18 minute Radio Ecoshock interview, or download it, in CD Quality or Lo-Fi

As a member of the Arctic Methane Emergency Group, which includes Arctic ice specialist Peter Wadhams at Cambridge - Paul has been ringing the alarm bells about the importance of dwindling ice cover on the Arctic Ocean.

The group thinks we should enact emergency geo-engineering to halt the ice loss, or maybe even restore it somewhat. They would do that by spraying sulphate particles to reflect the sun, as the ice did before. The sulphates would just be sprayed in the Arctic. In a previous interview, Paul said the particles would stay in the Arctic for a long time, due to prevailing wind patterns, but would eventually mix across the whole planet.

It's risky, but this latest NASA study does add weight to the AMEG position. I'm not ready to advocate that yet, but I'm wavering.

I think this new study will also change climate science, and maybe climate activism. Climate scientists, including the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, has been busy calculating so much change for so many barrels of oil, or tons of coal burned. Now we find out there's a huge feedback from the emerging dark surface of the Arctic Sea. Will some climate activists need to bring more focus on what is happening in the Arctic?

We also talk a little about the Polar Vortex, the relationship between melting Arctic sea ice and the rotten winter in North America and the UK. It's a wide-ranging interview.

Follow the prolific Paul Beckwith at his Facebook page . And don't miss .

THE NEW AMERICAN METHANE THREAT - NATHAN PHILLIPS

In past shows, going back a year or two, I've covered the many ways methane leaks out of the supply chain, before it gets burned in your stove or furnace as natural gas. My ground-breaking interview with Robert Howarth of Cornell is still important, along with his speech recorded at ASPO 2011. That's all in this Radio Ecoshock show on fracking from 2011.

The natural gas industry, mainly the frackers, keep telling us on TV, newspapers and online how their clean fuel is so much better than coal. They don't tell you their fracked wells blast methane into the sky, leak methane from storage, and leak still more methane all along bad pipelines and worse city distribution systems.

Last year a team of scientists drove a truck-full of measuring equipment around Boston and found literally thousands of natural gas leaks. Now the same team has released a new study showing thousands more leaks in Washington D.C.

Some of those leaks were so serious they posed a hazard for explosion. The scientists reported a dozen or so of the worst, and checking back 4 months later, found at least 4 had not been fixed! There is a whole You tube genre of videos with nothing but huge gas explosions. We just had a major line blow in Kentucky. According to press reports, more than a dozen people are killed every year in gas explosions, and the damages can be huge, over $100 million dollars.

But the real danger is simple: "natural gas" is methane. Methane is at least 100 times more powerful as a greenhouse gas during the first dozen years or so in the atmosphere. After that it begins to degrade into carbon dioxide and other substances, so the 100 year outlook for methane is perhaps 25 or 30 times more powerful than carbon dioxide. It's the short-term (10 year) risk that is most important for us. Adding the new methane that is fast becoming America's fuel of choice for heating and industrial use, to the new methane coming from the Arctic in places like Eastern Siberia - we could see a sudden up-tick in warming from methane alone.

The natural gas companies are using antiquated pipe systems to deliver in the cities. In the East, those systems are up to 100 years old.

We are joined by one of the principals in these studies, Dr. Nathan Phillips, a professor at Boston University. Dr. Phillips goes over the nature of the study, the risks to trees and human health, and the climate change risks.





Download or listen to this 20 minute interview with Nathan Phillips in CD Quality or Lo-Fi

I didn't know trees were endangered by natural gas leaks, but apparently their roots need oxygen just as our lungs do. "Natural" gas also helps more smog form, posing a human health risk.

The gas companies know how much they have been losing. They can just calculate the amount coming into a major metropolitan market, versus the actual amounts they bill for. Now those figures are publicly available in the U.S. but the public hasn't shown much interest yet.

There are similar problems, or worse, in the older cities of Britain and Continental Europe, where natural gas really got started lighting cities. Some European experts are getting in touch with the team of Nathan Phillips and his co-author Rob Jackson, formerly of Duke University, but now at Stanford.

Eastern cities like Boston have taken a winter pounding this year. Americans are burning more natural gas this winter, and that means even more is leaking out directly into the atmosphere, although it varies from city to city.

Nathan Phillips is co-author of the papers "Mapping urban pipeline leaks: Methane leaks across Boston" and "Natural Gas Pipeline Leaks Across Washington, D.C.," That one was just published in the January 16th edition of the journal Environmental Science & Technology.

There has been another national study into gas leaks in the United States, with a measurement of the climate change potential. I'm going to interview that scientist as well. We can't let this story go, even though mainstream media is giving it the big yawn. Aside from the people and property blown up every year, the line that natural gas is a good bridge while we get off coal is a lie. Joe Romm at the Climate Progress blog calls Natural Gas "the bridge to nowhere".

Maybe if I keep yammering about this science, and you pass it on, some other reporters will start covering the leaky and dangerous natural gas game.

NEXT WEEK

Next week I'll have a special for you on the great California drought. Is it climate change? Will food prices go up in North America, or the whole world?

Readership in this blog has really picked up in recent months. We had over 8,000 reads last week, and more than a thousand extra downloads from those readers. Please pass the word on to others.

My special thanks to all the listeners who support this show, and their non-profit community radio stations.

Find out more at the web site, ecoshock.org. Your support makes my reporting and broadcast possible.

I'm Alex. Thanks for listening again this week.

Extreme weather from the great climate disruption will rule our lives. I cover current heat waves in Australia, California, Brazil/Argentina, Alaska and Siberia, plus the UK floods.

Then author/activist Deborah Frieze on book & movement to "Walk Out, Walk On", and Dr. Jochen Hinkel on the huge cost of rising seas.

Normally on Radio Ecoshock, my expert guests do the talking, while I listen and learn along with you. But this week there are major developments here on Earth that are not coming through to you clearly, or not reported at all.

See the detailed note below, and by all means, listen to this program, to get the big picture.

Listen to/download this Radio Ecoshock show in CD Quality or Lo-Fi

WALK OUT WALK ON - AUTHOR DEBORAH FRIEZE



Maybe you see our way of living is in big trouble, starting to self destruct it's economy, and even the whole world ecosystem. You don't want to be part of that, but what can you do?

Maybe you should Walk Out and Walk On. That's the title of a book, and a movement, co-authored by Margaret Wheatley and Deborah Frieze. The web site linked above is more than a book promo. It's also central to a world-wide movement, with lots of inspiring examples and resources.

Part of the reason I called Deborah is the future of climate change and extreme weather events. It looks like millions, maybe billions of people will find themselves in an environment that is no longer liveable. Climate refugees may be in coastal cities that flood over, in valleys where hill-sides collapse or burn.. Others will be hit by persistent long-term drought that kills off agriculture. Many of us will have to judge when it is time to just walk out.

In the meantime, Deborah's book is really helpful at the personal level. It offers guidance and examples of people who have left the untenable to find lives that really matter. That works for those of us in the developed world who have choices. But the idea actually came from India, where the example of high school dropouts was found to be people who went on to form whole new lives.

I ask Deborah how this movement differs from the counter-culture of the late 1960's, when Timothy Leary advised us to "Turn on, tune in, and drop out"? She says the days of protest are not what she's talking about. Almost like David Holmgren on Radio Ecoshock a couple of weeks ago, our guest suggest withdrawal from a deadly system, to create a living and sustainable one instead. Perhaps "play" is a better answer than protest, she suggests. I'm not so sure.

Deb herself dropped out of the high tech industry in 2001, to become an alternative lifestyle teacher, then head of the Berkana Institute for some years. Now living in Boston, Deborah is deeply involved in forming local community there, and supporting other resilient community efforts around the world. Find her web site here.

Walk Out Walk On was written with Margaret (Meg) Wheatley. I wrote to Meg, but found she is on a two month retreat of silence, completely withdrawn from the world.

Listen to/download this interview with Deborah Frieze (25 min) in CD Quality or Lo-Fi

And please pass those links on to anyone you think would be interested. All links posted in this blog are permanent. People download these interviews for years.

THE COMING SUPER COST OF RISING SEAS - DR. JOCHEN HINKEL

As great storms pound the British coast, after other massive storms washed over the Philippines and New York City, we can only wonder what the costs and damage from sea-born flooding will be, as this century goes on. A new paper published in the prestigious Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal tries to calculate just that.

The paper is titled "Coastal flood damage and adaptation costs under 21st century sea-level rise". This global projection was created by a team of scientists from Germany, several from British Universities and the Tyndall Center, with more from Belgium, the Netherlands, and Austria.

The Press Release for this report is in English

and in German

From the Berlin offices of the Global Climate Forum, I'm pleased to welcome the lead author of that paper, Dr. Jochen Hinkel.



We discuss the critical problem of estimating sea level rise. The paper suggests a big range of possibilities by the year 2100, from 23 centimeters, say 10 inches, all the way to 123 cm, or four feet. Why such a big difference in projections? Mainly because no one is certain how fast the Greenland and Antarctic glaciers and ice sheets will melt.

We also know the sea is not level. For various reasons, water tends to pile up in some regions, and not others. Dr. Hinkel agrees.

The problem of rising seas has two major dimensions: 1. the seas will rise due to climate change and 2. hundreds of millions more humans are moving toward the sea coast (and so becoming more exposed to things like high storm surges as sea levels go up).

We may think that European or American countries, or at least major cities, will defend themselves from sea flooding for several decades. But if Asian cities, that have become the factories of the world, don't make it, we still all suffer the economic consequences. Does this global problem of sea flooding force us to into some sort of global response?

The paper estimates sea level rise will cause 100 trillion dollars damage EVERY YEAR by the end of this century. Rising seas, the authors find, could be the most costly aspect of climate change.

Hinkel warns: "if we do not reduce greenhouse gases swiftly and substantially, some regions will have to seriously consider relocating significant numbers of people in the longer run."

That can be reduced if countries take some action now to build things like big protective dikes, and tide gates for major cities. Dr. Hinkel and the Global Climate Forum are pushing governments to take such adaptive actions.

Is there a point where the costs of defense, like tide gates or maintaining sea dikes - coupled with the impacts of some storm damage - will be too great to maintain major cities near the sea? Can we try to project such a tipping point?

All this makes me wonder, could a major and long-lasting economic depression come out of this problem alone? We don't get that deep, but you can find out more from this new scientific paper.

Web link for this paper on rising seas.

The full text of this PNAS article is .

Listen to/download this 15 minute interview with Dr. Jochen Hinkel in CD Quality (only)

ALEX - THE MEANING OF GLOBAL EXTREME WEATHER

We humans were not made to comprehend the whole globe. Our DNA interprets the forest or plains around us. Lately, the Brits must think we are drowning, the Aussies are burning with heat, and Americans feel like the Ice Age has returned.

Buried in all that, and in the places major media ignores, is a very serious development. It's simply this: climate disruption has arrived much sooner than anyone, including the gloomiest scientists, and the doomiest doomers thought possible. The beast is here, now.

We must expect a bumpy ride. So called normal years may return to some places for a year or three, but we are entering a period of severe climate disruption that may extend for the rest of your life, and that of your children.

The ultimate destination may be a much hotter world, where the Arctic sea is tropical, and the skies placid, but we have a long road before that comes. It is the great disruption.

Before we consider what that means, I'd like to tie up some reporting from parts of the world that big television networks and newspapers ignore, or bury in the back pages.

To start with, if anyone tries to sell you on the myth of global cooling, just because of snow-storms on the East Coast, or relentless cold in Wisconsin or Winnipeg, the planet is much too hot in other places. I'm not going to cover the big storms hitting the North east. Major American media have flooded the world with that stuff, or you lived it personally, so you know. I do cover a bit about the amazing heat wave in California this winter.

DEATHS IN AUSTRALIAN HEAT WAVE

In past weeks, I've told you about Australia. Day after day over 100 degrees Fahrenheit, 38 degrees Celsius. Nights that don't get much cooler. The resulting bushfires spread became so big they created their own weather systems complete with dry lightening storms, causing more fires - a positive feedback effect of the worst kind.

Newspapers admit at least 400 people have died from this recent heat wave, with more to come. Heat is now a leading cause of death in Australia. That this could happen in a developed country should be no surprise. Estimates for the number of people killed in the European heat wave of 2003 range from 40,000 to 60,000 dead.

There are two lessons there.

1. Climate change will kill a lot of us directly.

2. Yes those most vulnerable, kids, the elderly, and people with existing medical conditions die first. But before that comforts you remember that sooner or later that will include you.

Before we leave Australia, there's one bit of good news. Despite that country digging in to flood the world with coal, solar power is really picking up in Australia's sunny south. A new report by the Australian Energy Market Operator says the power from roof-top mounted solar panels saved residents from the blackouts that usually accompany a gush of air-conditioner use. In 2009, Australia had those blackouts. But just four years later, there was enough solar power to shift the peak demand, and save the system.

It just makes common sense to install solar in a hot, sunny country. Why isn't Arizona listening?

RECORD HEAT IN ARGENTINA AND BRAZIL

But let's move on to a heat wave that is hardly reported. I'm talking about the monster heat striking southern Brazil and Argentina during December 2013 and January 2014.

It's a pathetic commentary on the news machine that when I searched Google news for reports on the South American heat wave, most of the reporting was about how it would affect the price of your coffee. It's all about markets for us, isn't it?

You have reason to be jittery about the cost of coffee I suppose. The drought in Brazil has already raised wholesale prices. The other major supplier, Indonesia, has the opposite problem. They are drowning in near record rain.

Brazil's largest city, Sao Paulo experienced its warmest January on record with a daily average maximum of 31.9 °C (or 89.4 °F) . Normal is about 28 degrees C for that time of year. Then it got hotter in Feburary, around 95 degrees Fahrenheit, or 35 degrees C every single day for the first week. That's before you figure in the high humidity which made it all unbearable.

In Buenos Aires, it was above 30 degrees C, at least 86 degrees Fahrenheit, every day of December, and most days of January. With the humidity, it felt like the mid-40's, or 113. In late January the temperature adjusted for the humidex reading was 47 degrees, or 116.

Only Al Jazeera TV got right down into Buenos Aires Argentina to document what it's been like for people there.



on this heat wave from BBC.

It isn't pretty. Listen to grandmothers liking on the 15th floor, after the electricity went out for a couple of weeks during big spikes of demand for air-conditioning. Her elevator isn't working, so climb all the way with groceries and water.

For me, that's an important lesson for the future. How will you cope with heat when the power goes out? Just a few solar panels could at least keep the fans running that could save your life.

Of course whether you are in a hot zone, or prone to ice storms, don't live higher than you can climb with groceries and supplies. James Howard Kunstler figures that is the seventh floor for most people, lower for seniors. If you live higher than that now, you may want to consider moving, preparing for the coming disruptions to our energy grid.

And finally from South America, the well known fact that over-heated humans get grumpy and socially unstable. Just look at the violent riots in Rio de Janairo over a hike in transit fares. Sure South America has a reputation for some riots. But I think we can presume the heat stokes emotions and discontent even higher.

If we experience a relatively sudden jolt in temperatures, and in a few minutes I'll explain how that could happen, you should expect social unrest as a consequence.

SIBERIA, THE ARCTIC AND ALASKA

Now we'll travel to the least expected, least reported places experiencing record high heat. If the temperature is below zero, can we call it a heat wave? We can if we are talking about the Arctic circle in winter.

You probably heard it was warmer in Homer Alaska one day in January than it was almost anywhere in the lower 48 states. The same Polar Vortex that brought snow storm after storm to the central and eastern part of North America - kept a big sweep of Hawaiian air running over Alaska.

World-known dog sled races were cancelled or shoved somewhere else. Forget about snow-mobiling in Alaska. A series of avalanches - that's melting unstable snow in January - closed down major highways. Places like Nome, Seward, and Homer hit all-time record highs. Kids all over Alaska were out in shorts. Backyard barbecue parties returned. That's nutty stuff that could only happen during climate change.

That was all part of the same weather system that delivered the drought to California, and oh yeah, another series of record high temperatures there. San Francisco was more than 7 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than a normal January. On the 15th and 16th, the temperature rose to 73 degrees, 22 C. Sacramento set more record highs in January 2014 than at any time in it's history.

It was the same in January on the other side of the world.

For this I thank Christopher C. Burt, weather historian for the wunderground blog, posted February 12, 2014.

"All-time-record monthly warm temperatures have been observed at many sites in the Siberian states of Yakutia and Kamchatka. In what is normally the coldest permanently inhabited place on earth, Oymyakon (various spellings) saw its temperature rise to a February record high of -12.5 °C (9.5 °F) on February 9th."

On Feburary 7th, Oymyakon rose to 2.9 degrees C, or 37 degrees F - the "first time this site has ever risen above freezing during the month of February." That is mind-blowing. Put that in your mental calendar. Consider what that may mean for extra permafrost melting, and even more methane into the Arctic atmosphere, if this kind of weather action continues.

Christopher Burt goes on:

"The normal high temperature at this time of the year should be around -48 °C (-55 °F). Oymyakon also holds the world record (along with Verkhoyansk) for the coldest temperature ever measured on earth at an inhabited site: - 67.7 °C (-90 °F) set on February 6, 1933 (almost exactly 80 years ago)."

This is the key to whatever nasty weather you have been experiencing. The world has not warmed by much, as a global average. But the poles have warmed way more than anywhere else. When there is a smaller difference between the poles and the equator, there is less to drive the Jet stream from West to East.

Instead the Jet Stream takes huge bends, almost blowing north to south. It gets stuck in those bends. Depending on which side of the stream you are, your weather gets stuck in a pattern which could be record warmth and drought, or record cold and snow. Lucky you, but it's all due to climate change, no matter what Rush Limbaugh or any net idiots tell you.

GREAT BRITAIN

Before I wrap up with my main point, we can't leave this extreme record report without talking about Great Britain. I've seen satellite photos that make my jaw drop. One huge single storm just swept over the whole of the islands, burying England, Scotland and Ireland in a wild pool of grey. Another satellite photo shows a series of giant lakes where the southern English countryside used to be. Then that system connected with the whole giant storm in Eastern North America, making a half-global, intercontinental storm. I warned about that several years ago.

You can imagine, or if you live there don't need to imagine, the mental costs to the average person. Day after day of gray wet skies, the worry of floods, the reality of floods. It must affect the economy as well.

Right now I'd like to point out a single aspect. The intense storms, with high winds and record-setting storm surges, are changing the British Coast line forever. Just a couple of weeks ago, an amateur fossil hound uncovered the remains of 200 year-old diosaurs, formerly embedded in a sea side cliff.

It was just last year evidence was found on the coast of humans living in Britain at least 800,000 years ago. Two weeks later, after those footprints were collected, the rising tides swept even that away.

The interesting sidelight on that discovery is the ancient climate was quite different as well. At 800,000 plus, it would have been quite cold, begging the question whether humans that early had managed to capture fire. But at the 700,000 year mark, people there would have experienced a climate hot like the Mediterranean. In my mind, that discounts theories raised lately that humans will go extinct soon. It may be possible we'll experience a major die-off, especially due to our overpopulated dependence on fragile global food supplies. But humans have and will adapt to big changes in the climate. It would be awful, but not necessarily extinction.

I'll have more to say about the coastal damage in future shows.

The British coasts are tumbling into the sea as these storms track into Britain, as they have done for the last half dozen years. Winter storms, and soggy summers, may be the new future of England all during the long period of climate disruption.

Everyone from Dame Julia Slingo, chief scientist for the UK Met office, to economy whiz Lord Stern acknowledges Britian's turn toward awful weather is driven by climate change. Lord Stern warns such destabilization applied to the whole world may well lead to military conflict.

In another amazing development, the British government has thrown in the towel, admitting that no government can cope with such massive storm damage. They apprently propose to abandon parts of the coast and inland to flooding, and will spend what little money they have protecting major cities like London. That's a song you will hear in many parts of the world.

Our whole landscape could change. River floodplains may expand. Other lakes could disappear due to lack of water. Major cities will go underwater. The Canadian and Russian north have already seen major geologic-level changes as permafrost melts.

NEW SCIENCE AND THE COMING HEAT

All this disruption of the weather and human lives is before the major change which scientists expect.

I know a couple of weeks ago I worried out loud that lower sunspot activity could mask the heat until a new period of high solar storms. Since then I've been advised by listeners that the sun is not so quiet as the mainstream media has been reporting. Anyway, I went back and listened to a couple of previous Ecoshock interviews to remind myself that the amount of solar activity is not the primary driver of what happens here on Earth. Our emissions are.

This week I came across two new scientific studies which show that we may very well be setting ourselves up for not just a gradual increase in global temperatures, but for a series of heat waves around the world.

No doubt you've heard some climate scientists have been puzzled why Earth isn't hotter already, considering the physics of the gigatones of greenhouse gase we've stuffed into the atmosphere, at an ever-increasing rate. We should be hotter than we are.

What caused this so-called "haitus"? - as dangerous as our current levels are, as we've just seen.

From sweltering Australia, and the University of New South Wales Climate Research Centre, scientist Matthew England just published a study that explains a lot. Dr. England was a Radio Ecoshock guest in 2011.

It boils down to this. The Trade winds blow across the Pacific Ocean, from East to West. These winds have been stronger than usual in the last decade. They have roiled the ocean surface, burying more carbon than we expected into the ocean.

The Trade Winds rise up now and then, it's just a natural cycle. But then they quiet down. When they do, all that heat energy buried in the upper Pacific waters will rise up, possibly in a period as short as a year, or a few years. We'll taste all the warming our emissions really add up to. More people will suffer and die. I'll have a lot to report on.

Here is Professor Matthew England, a guest on Radio Ecoshock in January 2011, talking about his new work:

[England video, audio in the show]

Professor England's study has been tested against climate models, and indeed just the trade winds could account for the missing heat. When those winds go quiet, you better have your living situation ready, if you can. It's going to get even wilder.

Finally, the tipping point for me this week was a fairly quiet release of another scientific paper from Germany. Armin Bunde and colleagues of Justus Liebig University predict 2014 could be a record-hot year, again. How do they know? It comes down to whether we have an El Nino or not. The Eastern Pacific ocean has an oscillation between the cooler La Nina, which we had for the past few years, and the heat-generating El Nino, which brought the last record setting heat monster of 1997-98.

Until very recently, no one could predict when an El Nino would come. It's an important thing to know. By studying weather and ocean patterns, the German researchers and their Chinese counterparts realized it all hinges on the connection of two regions in the eastern Pacific. If connections are made, and the atmosphere behaves in a certain way, there is a 75% chance an El Nino will come.

The scientists say we crossed that threshold in September 2013. That gives us a 75% change, pretty high in science terms, that 2014 will see an El Nino.

That paper is titled "Increasing frequency of extreme El Niño events due to greenhouse warming" published in the journal Nature Climate Change in January 2014.

And if the trade winds go quiet in the same year, Earth and it's inhabitants of all kinds could experience a jolt of heat from all our past emissions. We don't know what the trade winds will do this year. There is a 25% chance El Nino won't come.

But sooner or later, these and other boogies like melting methane clathrates and a whole series of positive feedback loops, could bring on the big warming jolt, decades before those predictions made just a few years ago by the IPCC scientists. Scientists are already suggesting 2014 will be the hottest year ever.

Hang on to your hats for that.

THANKS FOR YOUR SUPPORT!

I'm Alex. Please support this program at our web site ecoshock.org - and download all our past programs as free mp3s.

Thank you for listening to Radio Ecoshock.

SHOW SUMMARY: Thomas Peterson from World Meteorological Assoc. and NOAA on science of extreme weather events hitting us. Jonathan Bates, co-author of "Paradise Lot" on permaculture on a small lot in New England.

Whether you are freezing in North America, drowning in Britain, or roasting in Australia, extreme weather is hard to miss.

Thomas Peterson leads a team of scientists studying the role of climate change in messing with our weather. We talk about the drought of 2012 in the States, Hurricane Sandy, wild rainfall in Britain and N. Australia, and more.

Then to solutions. Jonathan Bates and his co-conspirator Eric Toensmeier turned an unpromising small lot in Holyoke Massachusetts in "Paradise Lot". It's famous small-scale homestead of permaculture. You could do it too.

Plus new music from Neil Young, "Mother Earth" recorded live on his recent Honour the Treaties" tour, against the Tar Sands and damage to First Nations people.

You'll also hear a short remix by Alex of "Into the Blue", sung by Lokka.

Troubles and solutions: it's Radio Ecoshock.

Download/listen to this Radio Ecoshock show in CD Quality (56 MB) or Lo-Fi (14 MB)

THOMAS PETERSON - EXPERT ON EXTREME WEATHER

Can scientists finally say "this extreme weather event, that flood, this storm, was caused by climate change"? Not so fast. Nothing is simple about the way this Earth works.

The planet's top weather agency, the World Meteorological Organization, set up a special branch looking into this. Dr. Thomas C. Peterson is President of the WMO Commission for Climatology. He's also the Principal Scientist for the National Climactic Data Center at NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, in Ashville, North Carolina.



For the past two years, Dr. Peterson helped gather up scientists to examine the links between human influences on the climate, and the extreme weather events that dominate the news and millions of lives.

Here is a helpful article about this: "Global Warming, or just the weather?" by Revecca Lindsey, published at climate.gov September 3, 2013

The new report we discuss in this program is here: ", Vol. 94, No. 9, September 2013."

The 2011 version of this paper was among the most read articles in the American Meteorological Society Bulletin.

Download/listen to this interview with scientist Thomas Peterson in CD Quality or Lo-Fi.

We talk about Hurricane Sandy, the U.S. drought of 2012, floods in Northern Australia and England, extreme weather in China, and their connection to climate change. In some cases scientists concluded warming made the event worse or more likely. In other cases, they were unable to find a link, chalking it up to "natural variability".

I want to add a footnote to my conversation with Dr. Peterson. He explained it's early days trying to narrow down the climate influence on crazy weather events. It's also hard to find scientists who can devote more time to short-term projects like the WMO annual survey of extreme weather.

Still, I came away from that report with some doubts. Too many times, the authors decide climate change was not an important factor.

For example, the paper on the record wet summer of 2012 in Britain concluded there was no link to the concurrent record melt back of Arctic Sea Ice. The paper was titled: "Are recent wet northwest European summers a response to sea ice retreat?" ed by F.B. Simon. Their conclusions that melting sea ice was not a factor directly contradicts other published science. I'm hoping to interview a British expert with a different opinion.

The case of extreme rainfall in Northern Australia in 2012 was even more bizarre. First that paper says climate change models show only a 10 to 15% influence on rainfall in that region. Since the 2012 rains far exceeded that, the authors say it must be natural variation, and not climate change. If it doesn't fit the models, or is more extreme than we expected, that's not climate change?

Remember none of the climate models predicted the early melt-back of Arctic sea ice in the first decade of this century either.

Other papers find climate had little influence, whereas the real causes were things like higher ocean surface temperatures. But why were the oceans so hot? That falls beyond the study.

I think there are just too many loose end in this WMO report. That's partly because this project is so new, and doesn't have massive funding that is needed, perhaps with a full-time team of experts. Like the volunteer IPCC project, we only get part of the picture.

No doubt, as this WMO extreme weather survey becomes better known, it will get more support, and get better at attributing and predicting extreme weather. We need that.

What is the future of this branch of science? There was a September 2012 workshop on "The Attribution of Climate and Weather Extremes: Assessing, Anticipating and Communicating Climate Risks" at Oxford University. People from disaster management to lawyers and insurance companies are interested in the results.

NEIL YOUNG SINGS FOR MOTHER EARTH

Before we go to our New England permaculture guest, let's hear rocker Neil Young. This song "Mother Earth" was performed live in December 2013, as part of the Honor the Treaty tour, which highlighted severe problems with the Canadian Tar Sands.

on You tube of "Mother Earth" recorded live. Find out more at Neil's web site.

JONATHAN BATES ON "PARADISE LOT"

Chances are you are not living on an ideal homestead of 20 acres, ready to feed yourself and your family, come what may. What if you are on a normal city lot, maybe even in a northern climate? What can you do?

Quite a bit. We're going to visit with Jonathan Bates. With fellow permaculturalist Eric Toensmeier, Johnathan has turned his one tenth of an acre yard in Holyoke Massachusetts into what they call "Paradise Lot". That's the title of Eric's best-selling homestead book telling you what works, and what doesn't. The blog for Paradise Lot is here.



As it happens, I've seen a video tour of this yard, with Permaculture promoter Geoff Lawton. The place really looks fantastic, stacked with greenery and food.

Download/listen to this Radio Ecoshock interview with Jonathan Bates in CD Quality or Lo-Fi

Jonathan and Eric also figured out a way to supplement their income from their project, which is important. We are not going to home-stead without any income. In addition to the books, Jonathan has specialized in his nursery, called Food Forest Farm. That started when people wanted cuttings from the many perenial hardy plants grown on their property. Why cast out the cuttings as "weeds" when they could be sold? Find that home business here.

Paradise Lot has also branched out into tours, workshops and community education.

We also discuss Northeast Permaculture, the informal network of permaculture people in and around New England. Pretty well every state there is represented. Find out more here. This may also give you some ideas on how to organize in your region, if that isn't happening yet.

Eric also has a really useful book out entitled "Perennial Vegetables" (check out http://perennialvegetables.org/) and is currently writing a new book on "Carbon Farming: A Global Toolkit for Stabilizing the Climate with Tree Crops and Regenerative Agriculture Practices".

MORE ON "CRASH ON DEMAND" WITH DAVID HOLMGREN

I got a lot of emails and comments about our last show with permaculture leader David Holmgren, and his new essay "Crash on Demand". Some of his long-time followers say David has not changed his basic position: we need to create a permanent culture that does not depend on fossil fuels, and is compatible with the long-term survival of the ecosystems.

I wrote David to clarify whether he was really calling for a mass effort to crash our economic system.

Holmgren has published a condensed version of "Crash on Demand" (see link below) which confirms he is sticking with the original version of permaculture. If enough people leave the industrial death system, and it crashes, that is just a side effect of doing the right thing, he says.

Keep up to date on this discussion on David's web site. There is lots going on, including this:

"In the follow up email exchanges, Alex Smith from Ecoshock Radio raised a further question which was not covered in his interview.

Is David saying that the system will crash anyway and by scaling up permaculture activities will fasten the inevitable, or is he really calling for non-violent efforts to crash the economic system, to save the planet, or is not calling for that? To answer that, he has compiled what could be termed as a concise summary of “Crash on Demand”. You can download the text here. We recommend you to read the whole essay first, though."



If you missed the original interview with David Holmgren, download this .mp3

Or you may want the whole 1 hour program which includes a very insightful response by Nicole Foss. Download the show here.

Other listeners question whether such a passive approach can possibly save us from the developing climate catastrophe, much less a severe energy crunch. Personally, I don't see permaculture growing fast enough to tip us into survival mode. It will help those involved, people like you and I.

But it seems the death culture can go on for a long time, consuming the planet even while billions of people drop off the wealth machine. The minority will still emit more greenhouse gases, kill off more species, drag more out of the sea and land.

The real answer is.....[drum roll] [splat]. OK, I don't have a good answer for our future. That is why I keep calling up the best I can find, searching for clues. I hope that is why you keep listening.

Lately our situation feels surreal. All over the web and social media, people call this the Wylie Coyote moment. It's that impossible time when the coyote has run off the cliff, and is still suspended in mid-air, before he plummets into the canyon below.

Outside a tiny conference in December at the Tyndall Institute in Britain, there is practically nothing going on about climate change. The cold winter in North America may persuade people this isn't a problem. But that same cold means we are burning a record amount of fossil fuels, adding still more to the blanket that will eventually burn us out. It doesn't matter what we think about climate change. It only matters how much we change the atmosphere.

Find the videos for that Tyndall conference here. I specially recommend the 15-minute presentation by scientist Kevin Anderson. Hats off to Chris for that tip.

It's the same with the economy. Everyone from top bankers, some of them committing suicide, - to the person in the street, afraid to invest in the rigged stock markets - everyone knows we're living on borrowed time. The giant ponzi scheme of debt and derivatives will tumble. We just don't know when.

We are living in deep fog now.

YOUR HELP AND SUGGESTIONS APPRECIATED

If you have suggestions of people you want me to interview, guests with vision even in darker times, please send me an email. The address is radio at ecoshock.org

I value your input, even if I can't answer each and every email. Your support for Radio Ecoshock has been essential, thank you.

Don't forget to educate yourself, to arm yourself with knowledge, from our years of past programs, all available as free mp3 from my web site, ecoshock.org

MUSIC! MUSIC!

Music is going to play a greater role in Radio Ecoshock, speaking to the heart instead of the brain. If you are getting this program as a Lo-Fi podcast, why not switch to the CD Quality podcast instead? . You'll get the full sound package, free as always.

I composed the music for the introduction in this show. My new hobby is combining royalty-free music loops with synthisizer music that I write. We'll head out with another short sample, where I completely remix audio with a vocal fragment by Lokka, called Into The Blue. Find her original on this page, by playing the first sample under the title "Vocals with Lokka 3".

Listen to my short version (2 min 30 seconds) here on Soundcloud



Alternative address:

Along those lines, I want to thank John "Skippy" Lehmkuhl, the "Plug-in Guru" for his help. John answers emails, and has a series of great free videos, and cheap courses, to help anyone wanting to make your own music. I've bought several plug-in packs for synthesizers like Massive from John. He's really got a handle on the sound we want for dance music.

I also got some help, and some loops from the folks at producerloops.com. The Swedes produce some killer dance tunes. Check out the Swedish Pop series here. Press the arrow for the demo - it's happiness in one little tune.

Finally, props to Steve at ADSR Massive in Hong Kong. On You tube, Steve gives out tons of free training on the Massive synthesizer. I get his weekly newsletter with free training videos here.

Be your own band! We can do it now. Be happy, make music. I do it, for Radio Ecoshock, and for my own sanity.

I'm Alex. See you next week.

Do we need to break the system to save the climate? Permaculture co-founder David Holmgren says "yes", in rare radio interview. Then Nicole Foss replies. Plus Alex's climate music.

Last week on Radio Ecoshock we looked at a growing group of activists, authors and scientists who say only a serious economic crash could save us from climate doom. Now we'll talk with the man who started this flurry, the co-founder of the permaculture movement, Australian David Holmgren.

I'll follow that up with reaction from Canadian finance and alternatives expert Nicole Foss. If you care about the future, this is radio you won't want to miss.

Download/listen to this Radio Ecoshock show in CD Quality (54 MB) or Lo-Fi (14 MB)

DAVID HOLMGREN - DESPERATE MEASURES FOR DESPERATE TIMES



Despite the hopes and warnings of the last generation, humanity is heading for the darker path of more fossil fuel development. Today's politicians are all about new pipelines, fracking, tankers, super coal mines and super coal ports, and of course endless oil.

It didn't have to be that way. We had other choices, but now the co-founder of the Permaculture movement says "Welcome to the Brown Tech Future". That train to climate disaster must be derailed for us to survive, he says, in a provocative essay called "Crash on Demand".

When it comes to David Holmgren you've either heard of him in an almost reverent way, or you haven't a clue. Along with Bill Mollison, David started the permaculture movement back in the 1970's. He's experimented with it ever since, from ecovillages and food forests to retrofitting suburbia. David is not a huge self-promoter. Outside of Australia, he's known mainly by people seeking alternatives to the system of endless growth, and pitiless pillage of the land. Find his web site here.

Download/listen to this Radio Ecoshock interview with David Holmgren (25 minutes) in CD Quality or Lo-Fi

So what are we talking about? The co-founder of Permaculture is saying we can't prevent a horrible collapse of the climate unless the current industrial-economic engine crashes. The only previous example of massive greenhouse gas reductions was when the Soviet Union collapsed in the 1990's. That's what it takes, Homlgren says.

This essay is part of a longer train of writings by Holmgren. He began with the book "Permaculture One" published in 1978, when David was 23, at the College of Advanced Education in Hobart, Tasmania. After experimenting with permaculture, from his own consulting firm, Holmgren updated the vision with the 2002 book "Permaculture: Principles and Pathways beyond Sustainability". That's still the best book on the subject, and fundamental to the permaculture movement world-wide.

In 2007, David published a long essay, which became a book, "Future Scenarios". Based mainly on the expectation of peak oil, that work has the four descent senariois: Brown Tech, Green Tech, Earth Steward, and Lifeboats.

Future Scenarios, combining Peak Oil and Climate Change, was developed into a web site which fully explains his views. It's a good place for anyone to start. Future Scenarios is also available as a book from Chelsea Green.

You can buy the book "Future Scenarios" here. Or read it free online at this web site.

The next link in Holmgren's deep work came in 2009, with an analysis of the fatal marriage of the financial system to the fossil fuel energy industry.

Download David's 2009 essay, which is part of this train of thought, and this Radio Ecoshock interview, "Money vs Fossil Energy: The battle for control of the world" from this web page.

Now we have "Crash on Demand, Welcome to the Brown Tech Future".

Find "Crash on Demand" at this web site, or download it as a .pdf .

In our interview, David says he suggested the four scenarios as short-term futures, possibly covering decades. Now he finds humanity has chosen one of the paths, the most deadly for the climate and ourselves, the "Brown Tech Future". In it we find desperate measures like the Tar Sands, Oil Shale, and fracking.

Meanwhile, Holmgren explains these four scenarios can exist at the same time, nestled within one another. For example, while the Brown Tech future dominates the world financial system, more and more people are opting out either as Earth Stewards, or building personal and local "lifeboat" economies (like permaculture).

The founder of Transition Towns, Rob Hopkins, is critical of this new Holmgren stance. Rob thinks we can work through the existing system. For example, he wants to make sure local governments continue, so we have the organization needed to change in stages.

SHOULD WE BRING IT DOWN?

But is Holmgren really calling on us to actively cause a crash of the world financial system? He says the great weakness of the world economy is it is built on faith - our belief it is real and keeps on going. If enough of the world's billion-or-so Middle Class stop believing, and remove their money and their working lives from the system, it will crash. It wouldn't take much of a trigger to destabilize such a fragile system. Perhaps if just 5 percent of people opted out, it may go down, Holmgren postulates.

People close to David say he is not really calling for us to destabilize the current economy, other than to change away from it - toward the things he has been advocating for decades: form local economies, and change to "permaculture" - a permanent culture. It's hard to nail David down on what he really means. I'm told he will be publishing a boil-down and clarification on his site in the next week or two. Look for that.

Meanwhile, in our radio interview, David points out he is far from alone in saying the system will crash, or need to do so. I've interviewed climate scientists, like Professor Tim Garrett from the University of Utah, who also calculate only a financial collapse could save us from unstoppable climate change. We talked about others in last week's interview with Albert Bates. But there are also a huge number of bloggers and financial experts who say a severe correction is coming.

Here is just one example, from a thousand, of a middle class person who wants to help the system down, without any mention of climate change or peak oil.

If you want to know more, here is a with David Holmgren.

Also, find another recent (Feb. 2014) interview with David on the show "21st Centruy Permaculture" on Shoreditch Community Radio (serving East London).

Read a response to David's Crash on Demand article by Dmitri Orlov, author of "Five States of Collapse". If we want to avoid "the climate cooker" as he calls it, David Holmgren says citizens can help tip the financial system over, by withdrawing money and investments, while living outside the consumer economy. Orlov does the math, and says there aren't enough activist citizens to make any difference.

Part of the tumultuous reaction can be found in this article by KMO, host of the C-Realm Podcast (and check out the comments below the article)

NICOLE FOSS on HOLMGREN



Can we save ourselves from the worst of climate change by helping an unstable economic system to collapse? That's the idea put forward by permaculture founder David Holmgren in his paper "Crash on Demand".

Our next guest wrote a deep and provacative article about Holmgren, climate change, and a crash. She travels the world, from New Zealand to Europe, giving lectures - which are now available as a 4-hour DVD set.

Nicole has been a specialist in nuclear safety in the UK, and editor of the Peak Oil journal "The Oil Drum Canada". Now she is co-editor at one of the Net's more popular financial blogs, theautomaticearth.com, where she writes as "Stoneleigh".

From her homestead in Ontario, Canada - we welcome Nicole Foss back to Radio Ecoshock.

Download/listen to this Radio Ecoshock interview with Nicole Foss in CD Quality or Lo-Fi

Read this essential essay about David Holmgren's "Crash on Demand" by Nicole Foss.

Nicole knows David Holmgren well. Later this year, in July, she will tour Australia with him, in a series of lectures. In our interview she explains very well the "Crash on Demand" paper and the four scenarios.

Foss raises a two-fold objection to David's idea of "Crash on Demand". First, she says the system is so corrupt and unbalanced it will fall over by itself; and second, when it does, some people will blame the permaculture movement, for wrecking the system.

In her essay, and our interview, Nicole points us to a European expert on systems analysis and large-scale economics. That's David Korowicz.

He's written a paper titled "Trade-Off, Financial System Supply-Chain Cross-Contagion: a study in global systemic collapse." How does Korowicz fit into our future? I hope to talk with him soon.

Essentially, Korowicz explains how a relatively simple trigger, whether it's a deadly virus hitting Asian factories, or a combination of extreme weather events, could bring down everything we take for granted, much faster than anyone thinks. It could cascade into a major economic slow-down in a matter of weeks.

DON'T TALK ABOUT CLIMATE CHANGE?

In her response to Holmgren, and almost as an aside, Nicole Foss suggests maybe we should stop talking about climate change:

"The economic contraction that is coming is very likely to have a far more substantial impact on emissions than any deliberate policy or collective action. The combination of this contraction and constructive collective action could be very powerful indeed, but achieving the latter action is not best done on the grounds of climate change. The same actions that would best address climate change in the aggregate are also the prescription for dealing with financial crisis and peak oil – hold no debt, consume less, relocalize, increase community self-sufficiency, reduce dependency on centralized life-support systems.

The difference is that both financial crisis and peak oil are far more personal and immediate than climate change, and so are far bigger motivators of behavioural change. For this reason, addressing arguments in these terms is far more likely to be effective. In other words, the best way to address climate change is not to talk about it."

At first that seems outrageous. But you must read the full essay, and listen to this interview.

Essentially, Nicole worries that fear of climate change, once realized by the public, could drive us towards even worse outcomes. For example, we may demand immediate action to save us from the (drought, heat wave, floods, fires) - leading to geoengineering pollution that hides emissions and makes everything worse. Or we may demand/allow a new type of eco-fascism - command and control state regulating every part of our lives (perhaps combined with the new spy state). And, as now, we can count on a gang of billionaires to cook up schemes that don't work but enrich themselves.

Why risk all that, Foss argues, when people can move toward a more sustainable lifestyle driven simply by concerns about a collapsing economy and peak energy? I disagree of course, and will continue to communicate about climate change in the Radio Ecoshock show.

Humanity is up against a novel and horrific set of problems, (energy, economy, overpopulation, nuclear disaster,climate change). We need a wide range of proposals and thought before we find any way out. That means tolerance and respect among ourselves, for a diversity of speakers and opinions. People who are so sure they are right, and everyone who disagrees is wrong, to the point of calling others "traitors", "idiots" and the like - are just weakening the whole discussion, and our possibilities. It's sad to see intellectual tyrants ranting at low levels, but I suppose the stress of our unwinding makes this inevitable from some people.

YOUR PART IN RADIO ECOSHOCK



I close out this program with my pathetic attempt to write new climate music. It's called "Burning Down the Future". If you missed it, download it here.

I've already received on email from a listener begging me to never sing again. As a compromise, I'll put my future songs at the end of the show, so you can turn it off!

I have several reasons for taking up "climate music" as a hobby.

First, there is a real need for it! I hope to inspire better artists to get active in climate change by writing better songs.

Second: it's apparent that just talking about these grave threats can never reach enough people, or bring action. The arts have always been needed to complement the rational mind.

Finally, I need the outlet to save my own brain from the stress of dealing with these stories. Sorry, you'll have to put up with more "music" from Alex in the future.

Perhaps better musicians will do a re-mix or perform one of my songs. (I was a pro-musician decades ago). I encourage anyone out there to take a shot at it and send me your results.

We are talking about whether humans will have a future, and what it will be. I encourage you to download this program from my web site, ecoshock.org. Listen again, and please, pass on the show, or the links, to everyone you know. This has to get out far and wide, while there is still time, if there is still time. I count on you to make this particular show sing on the Net, on social media, and through all personal contacts. You can use this "tiny url" in Tweets or Facebook posts: http://tinyurl.com/lqcbd8h

At the very least, please "Like" the ?

My special thanks to the non-profit station relaying Radio Ecoshock to you. Please support your local community station.

You make Radio Ecoshock possible through your financial support for this program, via my web site, ecoshock.org or my show blog at ecoshock.info. Please come back to this blog, published Wednesdays, so you can follow up and grow with me.

I'm Alex Smith. Thank you for listening and caring about our world.